March 15, 2010

Here is an example of how you convert an Http URL to a secured URL (Https). Here I am assuming the URL will be fully standard i.e. even the default port 80 will be written after colon as :80 and same for default https port :443.

June 12, 2009

Quillpad is a free online typing tool for 10 south asial languages. Yesterday I was having time free time in office so thought of searching for an API that helps writing bengali. And I landed in http://www.quillpad.in/bengali which is more than what I was looking for.

It’s very easy to type in Bengali in Quillpad. For example, type ‘apni kemon achen’ in the Quillpad editor. Quillpad will convert it directly into Bengali script. If you write a word like ‘bishesh‘, first sh should become ‘শ’ and the second sh should become ‘ষ’. Quillpad will intelligently do that for you. No need to use shift keys or to memorize any key mappings. So ‘রাষ্ট্রপতি’ can be written by typing ‘rashtrapati’ or ‘raashtrapathi’. Quillpad can also predict if multiple words are possible for your input. You can click on the word to select from those options. In addition Quillpad allows you to type English words freely in between Bengali words. It intelligently transliterates them into Bengali. Here is one example –

বাংলা টাইপ করা সহজ

As a quick test of using the WYSIWYG editor of Quillpad, I created to a blog in wordpress http://probasheamardingulo.wordpress.com and a blog in blogger http://probasheamardingulo.blogspot.com/. It looks so easy and convenient to me. I think I will continue writing in the blogger because it allows me to increase the font size of the content while to increase font in WordPress I have to upgrade to premium.

November 10, 2007

I have been using the newer version of GMail for the last few days and I like it very much. The first thing I noticed is that it’s faster than the older version. But the feature that I liked most is the Filter Messages like these action. Its wonderful and is saving me so many more minutes everyday. The other new action Mute takes out the message from my inbox, but I am not sure whether it archives it or deletes it do what with it. The replies by you are marked with a > sign in a discussion thread to easily distinguish between your responses vs the others responses. And of course the Contacts section has changed significantly in terms of visual appearance compared to other parts of the GMail. The embedded google talk now gives optionto show the list of contacts to chat in different sizes – tiny, small, medium, large.

MicroSoft made its Windows Live Hotmail available for general registration. I tool my new live id ashik@live.com . At first look, I think the calendar, calendar sharing and task integration in it will be useful. They are giving 5 GB space to start with which is cool. Let’s see how it goes.

August 22, 2007

I came to know about Geni from FreeBase a while ago. As soon as I saw it, I was amazed. allow people to graphically view and edit family trees. I was looking for such an application for a long time and now I have started my family tree. It will be not only useful and fun but will be a great way to socialize with the relatives.

Geni is a tool for understanding and staying in touch with your family. Geni lets you create a family tree through our fun simple interface. You can expand your tree by adding relatives’ email addresses. They will be invited to join your tree and can add other relatives. Your tree will continue to grow as relatives invite other relatives. From a technical point of view, the web site is so great in delivering exactly what a person would like to see in a family tree gradually that I am speechless! I don’t remember any other application stuck me with so surprise probably other than Facebook.

What are you waiting for now? Start your family tree in http://www.geni.com or join if one of your relative has already started the tree.

July 28, 2007

August 6 to 9th, I am visiting Philips Lifeline in an official trip with 5 of my other colleagues. I thought it’s good time to try a travel planner web site now. After looking around for a while I realized that Yahoo Trip Planner is the best that I have found so far.

I like Yahoo’s most of the services more than MSN services and only marginally behind Google’s services. But in trip planner application, Google still doesn’t have anything although they are wokring on one.

Its so wonderful that I can put all my travel related info in one place and whenever I need any info, I can lookup in my Yahoo Trip Planner. Here is the one that I am using as my first experience on handling travel data.

April 6, 2007

By now I have been using google maps for one and half year, Verizon’s GPS functionalities in my mobile for seven months, checked MapQuest, Yahoo Map as well as. I really like google map for many reasons. The newest cool feature added in its simplistic UI is My Maps where I can save my favorite locations/searches giving them name and description. It allows you to search nearby places after I give a search. Also I like its Add Destination and Recent Searches. I was using Yelp for this kind of functionalities.

February 21, 2007

Here I provide you the step by step instructions that I carried last night to develop a web site for an IT professionals’ association in California, USA. They need a good news/content management system, a very good forum software and some sort of community/networking features other than regular static/dynamic functionalities that might be developed later phase by phase. I know Joomla (emerged from Mambo) PHP framework or CMS has many great extensions that I can use in developing web 2.0 sites. Although it has been long since I last used PHP, joomla made my work easy by mostly limiting me in configuration and installation efforts to develop a site. So I thaught to share it with you here. I wish there would be something similar in Java with all the extensions and easy to install features!

Pre-Requisite

A domain hosting space where you want to host your site. I chose hostmonster as they have support for PHP, MySQL, Fantastico, Joomla, SMF and many more.

Steps

Install Joomla! I logged into my hostmonster control panel, used Fantastico to install Joomla 1.0.12 in /cms directory. Keep the MySQL database, username and password handy with you as these will be needed in later steps.

Dont use the GZip compression output, uncheck that option in the wizard page.

Give the same MySQL database name, user name and password that you used for joomla installation. You can find these information in configuration.php file under your domain’s /cms directory. The 3 variables to check for the values are – $mosConfig_user, $mosConfig_password, $mosConfig_db .

Once you finish installation, you should get a success message and install.php file should be deleted for security reason.

Unzip the community builder zip file in your local hard drive. You will need cblogin.zip, comprofiler.zip, mod_comprofilermoderator.zip and mod_comprofileronline.zip files from this location in later steps.

If you have followed the steps properly, you have enabled your site for visitors to register/login using CB Login form, roam around and give entries for the various news/polls/blogs entries, submit weblinks, do social networking with like minded community members etc. Your users should be able to roam around the joomla cms pages through the link – http://www.yourdomainname.com/cms and the forum either through http://www.yourdomainname.com/forum or from CMS home page’s Forum link.

January 30, 2007

I have been following the trends of Web 2.0 for a while and experiencing the changes in the way we use internet. I gave special attention to Web 2.0 when I found one of the main features declaration for newly released Java SE 6 is the support for Web 2.0. Earlier internet was a platform for 2 parties to push/pull information and do transaction. The 2 parties were more or less divisible by their functionalities like information/product supplier and user/consumer. Now its not only or no more that, its about participation of all the parties involved. Anyone can be in the recieving end and anyone can be in the supplying end as well. The more participation is there, the more valuable the service is. Its no more focused on attracting the giant companies or investors, the focus is now distributed to the individual netizens (citizens of the internet). The best article describing Web 2.0 is written by Tim O’Reilly. Google is in the lead of Web 2.0 initiatives instead of Microsoft, and you are not surprised!? Not co-incidentally, Google has been recently voted in a massive survey by Fortune as the best company to work for in USA.

I feel the ground work was done long time back when people started appreciating open source models, projects. The dot.com bubble of late 90s couldn’t reduce the importance of internet in cybercitizen’s life. The web matured from a container of products to a provider of scalable services. Web 2.0 hints at an improved form of the World Wide Web, with technologies such as weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds and other forms of many-to-many publishing; social software, Web APIs, Web standards and online Web services representing a significant change in web’s use and behavior. As a Web 2.0 world’s cybercitizen, I use the following web services every now-and-then.